


In the Shadow of the Colossus

by EllaBesmirched (El_Bell), purpleandorangesheep



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: AOT typical angst and violence, Attack on Titan AU, Kylux+titans, Levi!Hux, M/M, Minor Character/Original Character Death, Rating for violence and eventual smut, Titan!Kylo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 19:26:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12019416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/El_Bell/pseuds/EllaBesmirched, https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleandorangesheep/pseuds/purpleandorangesheep
Summary: When Captain Hux leads an expedition beyond the Wall, he intends a simple mission perfect for breaking in new cadets. The newest Survey Corps recruits are promising, and Hux has his eye on one in particular-- General Organa's overzealous son.  Ben Solo is young, naive, and foolish, but he's a strong fighter and he's certainly no coward.But when Hux selects Ben to be a part of a small task force to deter a stampeding hoard, he expects to make short work of the approaching threat.He doesn't expect to loose his whole team. He doesn't expect to watch Ben die. And he certainly doesn't expect to be rescued by a strange new variation of titan that, impossibly, seems almost human.





	In the Shadow of the Colossus

**Author's Note:**

> SHEEPANDPENCILS AND I DID A THING. 
> 
> I don't even know what to say about this at this point because we've been sitting on this first chapter while we fleshed out the rest of the story a bit for like two whole months now, but I let me tell you, getting to collab with Sheepandpencils has just been the most amazing thing. The most. Amazing. Thing. I scream every time I look at this art and getting to write a Kylux story in the AoT world has been SO MUCH FUN and such an interesting challenge and I just really hope you all enjoy!
> 
> Also! Hopefully this is written in such a way that you don't actually need prior knowledge of AoT to follow, but if there's any questions, I'd be OVERJOYED to answer them! 
> 
> Come visit us both on tumblr! I'm [here,](https://ellabesmirched.tumblr.com/) Sheepandpencils is [here,](http://sheepandpencils.tumblr.com/) and check out the tumblr post with the illustrations for this chapter, and the gorgeous drawing that started it all [here.](http://sheepandpencils.tumblr.com/post/165064250265/when-captain-hux-leads-an-expedition-beyond-the)

  
  
When he died, at least he'd go looking at something pretty.

It was a wry, sarcastic musing, one that told Hux he had reached the farthest limit to which hope could carry him. Beyond this, there was nothing but black humor and teeth. They'd take out as many as they could. They'd be overrun. It would hurt.

Hux was no stranger to pain. But it was too bad the brat would have to go with him. It was really too bad. He'd had potential. And truly, he was very pretty.

"Sir?" Ben called over the pounding of his horse's hooves. His voice was thin with fear, with false confidence that Hux could see through like water, with the glinting edges of resignation.

Hux would probably die first. He'd tell the boy to keep running, to keep leading the monsters away from the main scout group, to keep riding for as long as his horse could stand it. And Hux would string between them, take a few out, distract them. If he was lucky, he'd be able to take half the group from Ben. And the kid did have potential. Maybe he'd--

No.

Hux grimaced and adjusted his grip on Ben's waist. He couldn't tell what that was-- the fading limits of hope still putting out desperate tentacles, or the blackest sarcasm taking over so he wouldn't have to think, _Not again. Not another one._

Hux adjusted himself on the back of Ben's horse, his 3D maneuvering gear clicking through the sounds of surging horseflesh. Hux's horse was dead.

There was a strange silence under the pounding of hooves. Hux always noticed it at times like this. Or, in the times he'd come to before, that were closest to this. He'd never quite made it this far though.

Some men heard nothing but hoof beats and their hearts in their ears. But Hux heard everything else. He could hear the titans thundering along behind them, hear their awful teeth clacking in their over-sized mouths, hear the drool dropping to the earth from cheshire grins like disgusting, perverted rainfall. He could hear Ben panting for breath.

He could hear Ben's heart sprinting in his chest in time with his own.

Then he heard the horse's foot slide on a loose stone. Heard the bone crack.

He didn't feel them pitch forward, because before the crack had finished reverberating in his skull, before his stomach had finished dropping with the horrible realization that their short lives had just gotten a few minutes shorter, he'd pulled one of the triggers at his hips and felt himself change direction with dizzying rapidity, the cable at his left side shooting away from him with a metallic _ting._ Ben’s warm, broad back was wrenched away as the boy and his horse crashed to the ground with terrible finality. Hux couldn’t wait to see how he fared, if the fall made quick work of him. If Ben was lucky, it had. But Hux had never put much stock in luck.

Hux leaned back in his harness, adjusted his weight and focused on the matter at hand. They were out in the open, a grassy field that might as well have been a graveyard. Hux’s left grappling hook stuck in the forehead of the tallest titan-- twelve meters-- and, just as he had expected it to, the titan jerked back at the weight tugging at its skin. Hux used the jerk to his advantage, shot his second line and propelled himself between two of the smaller ones. The first line disconnected, and he was in range now, in position to take out the fat one (seven meters) with the long legs that was trailing along the outside of the cluster.

His boots struck titan flesh-- even through the souls of his shoes, he could feel the heat it was giving off. Two steps, light like a moth dancing around a flame, and one leap-- his blades sunk into too-thick skin, the titan crumbled, a perfect pie slice of steaming flesh crashing to the ground a split second before the titan itself, and Hux momentarily, touched down.

He paused only to look to Ben. Just one glance.

The brat was struggling out from under his horse, face wide with terror, and determination. Three titans were bearing down on him; the other six had turned their attention to Hux.

And then he was airborne again, propelled through the spaces between the monsters on iron cables like air currents. He feinted and one of them crashed into another. That bought him enough time to swing low, take out the smallest (four meters).

The ping of iron ratcheted through the air and Hux turned his head. Ben was free of his horse, was--no. No. A titan had lifted the horse from his legs, tossed it away like a toy, like a little tin soldier’s mount. It curled fat fingers around Ben’s broad chest and Ben had pulled one of his triggers in a desperate bid to gain freedom.

Hux couldn’t watch this happen. Not now. Not again.

Instead, he took out a third titan (eight meters), but his heart wasn’t really in it.

Ah. There it was again. That pesky black sarcasm. He’d wish the brat a happy death, next, call out ‘maybe it’ll swallow you whole and you can drown instead.’ That had to be marginally better than being crushed to death by molars the size of boulders, right?

No, Hux decided. He’d rather not die in the dark.  Being chewed up would be better.

Ben screamed and all the titans turned. It tore through Hux like teeth, spurred him into motion. He caught the end out of the corner of his eye as he flung himself around the tallest titan again. It was the one that had managed to snatch Ben up, yank him from the hands of a smaller horror. Ben actually punched the thing on the nose and for one, fleeting vertiginous second, Hux thought he was going to be sick. _How many, now?_ His head whirled with calculations, with momentum and angles and-- it wasn’t enough. He wouldn’t get there in time, not without putting himself in mortal danger-- and he couldn’t do that. He had to take out as many as he could, keep them away from the main squad for as long as possible. The greater good.

There was nothing he could do. Again.

Ben was resolute in death. Once he saw there was no escape, he stopped screaming. Hux had to look away to dodge a swipe, should have used his new position to kill a fourth monster, but he couldn’t resist looking back at Ben.

Ben had turned his head. Their eyes met.

He really did have potential.

What a waste.

Without saying anything, Ben’s arm moved with sudden and undeniable purpose. A metallic click pinged over the sound of hungry grunts and pounding fleshy feet; Hux watched one of Ben’s gas canisters fall from his hips to the ground below.

Practical boy. No use taking it with him.

Hux looked away-- not because he wanted to, not because he couldn’t see, but because if he kept watching, he’d die too.

He swung out and touched down again, paused to reassess the scene. An hour ago or sixty seconds ago, Ben’s horse had faltered. Hux had killed three titans.

Benjamin Organa-Solo had disappeared, like so many before him, into the belly of a monster.

Hux looked up at the remaining titans, all bearing down on him, now that Ben was gone, and mused, _at least I won’t be the one to tell the General._

The pack of titans had grown. Hux lost himself in the to and fro of it all. He severed limbs. He killed another. He blinded a fifth. There were too many. He was good. He was stellar really, ‘Humanity’s Strongest Warrior,’ but six, seven, eight-- how many of them?--all swarming him, and he was in a field. There were no trees to swing to, no rocks to hide under. He’d squeezed out of tight spots before, had taken chances he shouldn’t have and come up howling in victory. And now this was it. The chances were spent.

His first set of blades broke, and he attached the second. Absently, like it wasn’t really him doing it, he retrieved Ben’s discarded gas canister. Just in case.

It wasn’t long after Ben had slid away from him in a spray of blood, but it still felt like hours. Steaming titan flesh was rotting away all around him, and somehow, there were more. There were always more. There would always be more.

The one that finally caught him (twelve meters) tried to bat him out of the air and missed. But its fingers curled around his left cable instead, yanked him back, and for all his finesse, all his agility, there was nothing he could do to stop himself from tumbling end over end through the air until he smacked into its huge stomach like a rag doll.

He hung, limp and dazed with his head ringing as it wound up the cable in its fist. He blinked and he was dangling over its mouth, staring down into the black pit below, all the time between just. Gone. So he would die in the dark after all. He’d seen men die like this. He’d seen men swallowed whole.

It was too bad this wasn’t the same one that had eaten Ben. He wouldn’t mind seeing that pretty face one last time before he went. Before all his plans went to hell along with him.

Maybe all their calculations had been wrong, he mused. Maybe it was impossible to reach a titan’s stomach still living.

How quaint. Even here, even now, he couldn’t kill the tiniest spark of hope.

What a fool he was.

The titan lowered him carefully toward its mouth like he was some refined delicacy, and the air shattered with sound.

Hux turned his head because he’d never heard a sound like that in his life.

As Hux watched, an aberrant clawed its way from the mouth of another titan-- the one, he realized dazedly, that had eaten Ben. The aberrant was fifteen meters tall, he’d guess, and… And fit. Broad chested, muscled like a statue with unusually white teeth gleaming through the muscle where its cheeks should be and long black hair that brushed its shoulders. If Hux’s cables hadn’t been so firmly tangled in this titan’s hand, if disengaging them wouldn’t have sent him plummeting into its mouth, the screaming abnormal titan might have been the distraction he needed to get free.

But as it was, he stayed stuck, could only watch the aberrant as it careened toward him, eyes locked on him with a single minded hunger. Well, wasn’t he popular.

The titan that had Hux turned its head, slow and lazy, and the aberrant _kicked_ it. What the fu--?

Hux didn’t have time to finish the thought. The world was spinning, he was falling and--

He straightened with a jerk when he pulled one of his triggers, propelled himself to a titan shoulder and was enveloped in a plume of steam when he sliced into it. He leapt away, touched the ground again, and whirled to face the monsters, to face the terrifying aberrant that he was sure would be bearing down on him, having wrestled him from the jaws of a weaker colossus.

The aberrant was not bearing down on him.

It was stomping on the neck of the titan Hux had escaped from. The titans seemed to have forgotten Hux entirely-- they were all turning toward the unique variant.

Well.

This was his chance to run. He could-- Hux whirled on the spot looking for the safest way to cover, and found nothing. He was in the middle of an open field and it was miles to the tree line. He’d be a sitting duck.

The choice was easy then. He’d ‘help’ the monster. He’d take out a few more. And then when it wasn’t distracted, when it came for him, he’d either take out the new arrival, or he’d die.

Hux tightened his grip on his blades and started plotting his route.

But there was no need. This newest titan was a terror, carving swaths through titan flesh like they were made of wet clay. They flocked to it and it broke them again and again and again. Until there was nothing left. Until Hux was alone in an empty field and it was staring at him. Just staring.

How the hell was he going to kill this monster?

And why-- why were its eyes like that? Like it could see him. Like it knew.

All of a sudden, the titan moved, faster than Hux had ever seen one of them move. He leapt back, aimed a grappling hook and fired, but before it could connect, the titan had grabbed him around the middle. Out of the fat and into the fryer. He actually laughed. Something was cracking inside but. He only had to hold it together for a few more moments. Then it wouldn’t matter anymore.

The titan gingerly set Hux down on its shoulder. And then it started to run.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Hux wasn’t a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He held on for dear life, anchored himself in place with his hooks and watched the countryside streak by as the monster careened toward the mountains, toward cover.

Hux had seen a lot of aberrants in his time. Too many, really. They always gave him the shivers-- normal titans were unpredictable enough, but the bizarre perversions and mutations the aberrants represented ratcheted up the danger and the feeling that he was looking at something _wrong._ Titans were already wrong enough when they weren’t semi-intelligent, or crab walking faster than others could run, or jumping like grasshoppers instead of sprinting. And it was always the aberrants, the unique ones, that took his soldiers away from him.

This, whatever this was, was something different.

This one was almost. _Human._

Twice more it encountered other titans. Twice more it stomped them into steaming wreckage. Both times it kept its right shoulder shrugged, kept Hux nestled in the hollow between its neck and shoulder blade, hid him behind a swinging curtain of soft hair. It was hot here, and Hux dripped sweat, but, miraculously, he actually felt… safe.

Hux realized when the lurch and sway of the titan’s gait became more pronounced that it was growing tired. He wasn’t used to that. Even when they were cut to ribbons, these things _never_ stopped coming if they could help it. But this one.

They made the tree line, in the shadow of the mountain, and Hux realized in a dead, disbelieving sort of way that the titan had delivered him to the rendezvous point. And well ahead of schedule.

It had been running for hours.

It struck its knees. It tottered and Hux grappled away to the nearest tree, just in time to watch it lift one hand like it weighed more than the mountain and reach lazily toward the shoulder Hux had been riding. And then it fell, crashed to the earth in a spurt of steam.

Hux realized his heart was racing. He should run. He should rappel away from this spot-- that thing had been a magnet for other titans in the few instances they’d encountered them. But he couldn’t resist leaning forward, peering through the billowing steam, because _something_ was happening.

The steam cleared. Hux felt his heart stop.

Pulling himself from the neck of the beast, shoulders first like an exhausted dog, was a dead man. A man Hux had watched devoured. A man who was more boy than anything, who’d barely broken in his green Survey Corps cloak before it was drenched in blood.

Hux was moving without conscious thought, swinging back down from the tree, and he caught Ben Solo before he could fall.

The boy was covered in steaming blood. He was unconscious. But he was alive.

Hux adjusted his grip on the man hanging limp in his arms and brushed the wet hair off the brat’s forehead, saw his eyes twitching under thin lids and his full lips puckered in sleeping unease.

He was alive.

This was certainly new.

 

*******

 

It was hard to hear anything over the stampeding horses. The captain and the lieutenant rode at the head of the pack, two shining beacons in the sun, one silver, one gold.

“And you thought your first expedition wouldn’t be exciting,” Poe called out to Finn, his smile too wide to be fully genuine.

Finn’s dark face was gray when he said, “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, sir.”

“Save that ‘sir’ shit for the captain,” Poe called back.

But Ben didn’t hear what he said next because Rey was talking to him. “We should split up,” she was saying. “I bet that’s what they’re talking about. Wouldn’t take much to lead them away from the main caravan.”

Ben watched the back of the captain’s rose gold head and felt pride swell in his chest. The captain would get them out of this. It was only their first expedition-- it was supposed to be simple. The captain would keep them safe.

“Right!” Hux’s voice cut through all the noise and he rattled off four names. Ben didn’t hear the other three, because the first one was his. “With me!” And he started to angle away, toward the five titans sprinting toward them across the field. Ben understood instantly. Hux was heading back toward the tree line, toward cover. He’d have to race right past the pack to get there-- they were bound to follow. And if one or two stragglers kept coming for the main caravan-- well, that was better than five.

“I’ll go too!” Rey called without missing a beat as Ben started to break away from the main group.

“Hold your position, soldier!” Phasma screamed back in a voice like a knife, cold and sharp and final. The sunlight glinted off her white-blonde head.

Ben offered Rey one reassuring grin. “See you at the rendezvous point!” And then he was sprinting away, catching up to the other four soldiers, Rey’s terrified eyes gleaming in his head.

Good. She had to learn he could handle himself without her. Besides, the main group needed her. Aside from Ben, Hux hadn’t chosen anybody from the top of their class. He’d left Finn and Jacen behind with Rey-- because the safety of the caravan was more important. Hux was the strongest soldier Humanity had. If he was leaving the main group, he had to leave it well protected.

Ben glanced at the faces of the soldiers Hux had chosen, saw how scared they were, but too, how resolute. Rodinon was an old hand. He’d been with the Captain for years now. He was the only one who didn’t look like he was about to shit his pants. Ben grinned at him and he scowled. Then there was Unamo. She’d come in twelfth in the class. She wasn’t on par with Ben and Finn and Rey and Jacen, but she was strong. She took orders well, worked well in a team.

Ben didn’t have time to assess the third soldier because they’d reached the first titan and Hux vaulted away from his horse. He was incredible to watch and Ben couldn’t help but stare as they raced along. He made flying look like swimming, like he could go anywhere, like he wasn’t constrained by cables and harnesses and the laws of physics. With a spinning flourish, he cut a perfect slice from the titan and used its falling body to rappel back to his horse. Ben thrust a fist in the air and whooped and the captain looked back at him, eyes flat, judgemental, annoyed. But the corner of his mouth twitched, just once. Rodinon rolled his eyes. Unamo was focused intently on the tree line, crouched low over her horse. The third soldier, the one Ben didn’t know, was staring at the dissolving titan flesh they left behind like she might be sick.

The captain turned his head and four of them focused on him instantly; Ben hadn’t realized how attuned he was, how attuned they all were, to Hux’s every move until that moment.

“Rodinon, to my left, Unamo, my right, Talia, you bring up the rear. Solo and I will move through the bulk of the cluster. You three are back up-- use your best judgement, don’t get involved unless you have too, or one of us calls to you. You’re to go _around_ the cluster and meet up on the other side. Got it?”

“Sir!” The three voices were loud-- maybe even a little relieved. Ben was too busy grinning to respond as he should have. The captain had _chosen him_ . He’d get to help Hux take out the titans, _real_ titans!

“Solo!”

“Sir!”

“We’re going _through_ the cluster. Take one out if you can, but our goal is--”

“Distraction, yes sir!”

“Interrupt me again and I’ll--”

“Sorry, sir!”

Hux glared at him so fiercely Ben felt like he was looking up at him from the end of Hux’s sword. He ducked his head, heat flaring in his cheeks.

“Rodinon!” Hux snapped. He was riding close to Rodinon’s horse, eyes moving to the rapidly approaching swarm. When Rodinon looked over, Hux tossed him his reins. Ben took that as his cue, and did the same with Unamo.

Hux waited until the last minute, waited until they were so close to the titans, Ben could smell their putrid breath like rotting meat. Then he screamed, “Now!”

Rodinon broke left, Unamo right, and Talia pulled back on her reins. Before Ben could feel his horse change direction beneath him, he pulled a trigger at his hip, and he was gone, airborne, flinging himself through the air with a joyous bark of laughter. There were only five of them-- one titan for each soldier here. They’d make short work of them.

His first hook landed in the misshapen shoulder of a titan about eight meters tall. Ben could feel a manic grin plastered to his lips as he was propelled through the air, careening toward the ugly bastard  so fast all he could hear was the wind in his ears.

Then it moved.

It jerked its arm across its body, wiped the hook from its flesh and Ben felt himself start to tumble toward the earth.

He leveled out when he pulled the second trigger and his right hook stuck in a huge arm.

Ben turned his head to follow his flight path just in time to catch sight of Hux, spinning like a ballet dancer, swords glinting around him. He cut the arm off, and Ben was falling again.

Things hadn’t moved around so much in training.

Hux slammed into him, hard, and Ben wasn’t quite sure how he’d done it. But it steadied him, knocked him into the air enough for him to get off another shot, and before he was whisked away on the iron currents, he heard Hux scream out, “Mommy’s not here to help you, _boy._ Pay attention!”

Ben saw red.

He hadn’t graduated in the top five in his class because his _mother_ was there to hold his hand.

This wasn’t training. This wasn’t wooden dummies and thrown targets. This was war.

Ben didn’t remember what he did next. But then he felt his blades sinking into flesh and he was flipping away, breaking through the cluster and out on the other side, where Rodinon and Unamo were meeting back up. He rappelled back to his horse with a joyful cheer. He’d _gotten one._ When he turned in the saddle to see if the captain had seen, Ben had just enough time to watch Hux, a swirl of red and silver, slice into a creature that made a rapid, erratic swipe for him. Hux dodged like he’d known it was coming, although, of course, he couldn’t have, and swung back to earth, back to Rodinon, who was watching him like a hawk and slowing the horses just enough that they would remain in range of Hux’s swing.

They had managed to take out two of the monsters.

A scream rent the air.

All four soldiers whirled in the saddle and saw Talia. She’d done as she was told, guarded the rear. Ben had thought the titans would keep following Hux and him, that the two of them using titan flesh like a jungle gym would be enticing enough to take the focus off any of the riders.

Hux said, “Go,” and all four of them were in the air, flying back to Talia’s position.

They did make short work of them after that. There were only three left. Ben guessed Hux had been trying to lead the cluster closer to the trees before they fought in earnest, but with one of them caged in a titan fist, the decision was easy to make. Ben killed another. Unamo killed a second. Hux took out the one holding Talia, and Rodinon caught her as she fell, helped direct her back down to earth. She was shaken, but mostly unharmed.

The captain immediately turned his head and looked across the field. Ben followed his gaze. The main scout group wasn’t terribly far off-- they were dusty pin pricks in the distance, and it would still take time to catch back up, but they might not need to regroup at the rendezvous point. Four heads all swung around to Hux. The captain sucked his teeth.

Before Hux could speak, Ben felt a tingle dart up his spine and without any real reason, he turned back to the copse of trees they’d been angling for. “Uh. Sir--”

The greenery exploded in a burst of splintered wood and fallen leaves and Ben felt his heart plummet into his stomach.

It was an aberrant, at least ten meters tall, _sprinting_ for them on its hands and feet, knees splayed frog-like to the sides. Its mouth gaped and its tongue lolled. And it was _fast._

Ben stared it down, eyes flicking nervously between Hux and the monster. They were the best of the best. They were the goddamn _Survey Corps._ They could take out one freak-- even if the way it was moving was making Ben nauseated.

Hux’s eyes narrowed and for the first time since they’d met, Ben actually saw a spark in them. A fire.

The ground was shaking. Out of the copse emerged a swarm of jiggling flesh and swinging arms and tottering legs. Five, eight, eleven-- Ben stopped counting.

“Follow me,” Hux bellowed. And he took off sideways, away from the main caravan, away from the copse of trees. They all kicked into motion, and the aberrant, thundering across the open field, tracked them. They left the ruined cover in their wake. They raced into a flat green sea and Ben had the horrible, hysterical thought that Rey would never forgive him for dying.

The caravan faded away. The titans caught up.

Unamo went first, in a spray of blood and with barely a scream. Then Rodinon-- he’d tried to save Talia and gotten himself grabbed along with her.

Hux took out the titan that killed them both, a split second too late to save them. When he tried to swing back to his horse, the aberrant swung and landed on it, crushed it beneath its awful splayed feet. So Hux had killed it too, before swinging back down and landing behind Ben as his horse thundered on, gasping for air.

In the end, they managed to take out most of the swarm. But by then they were exhausted. Ben was exhausted. He’d pushed himself beyond what he thought he was capable of. He’d nabbed a few kills that normally would have made him gloat and whoop with pride. But he still got caught. Everyone had been right about him after all. His mother had been right.

He hadn’t been ready. He’d had no idea. No idea.

In the moment before it happened, Ben looked down and saw Hux. His captain of only a moment, a man he’d worshipped for years, had been desperate to prove himself to. The spark had left his eyes again, left them even blacker and deader than before. He was going to die too. And he knew it.

Ben dropped one of his gas canisters at the last second. Maybe Hux could--

And then there was nothing but the black.  
  
  
Ben awoke to find his head was throbbing and he groaned without meaning to, rolling from his side onto his chest and curling his hands in his hair. What had he done? Had he been drinking? Was he--

“What are you.”

The voice was cold and distant, more statement than question and Ben went cold because he recognized it. He straightened up, ignoring the horrible pounding in his head and met the captain’s cold, dead eyes.

They were outside. They were alone. Captain Hux had started a small fire.

“What’s going on?” he asked against his better judgement. Why couldn’t he remember how he’d gotten here? And where were the horses--

Ben’s head pulsed horribly and he slammed his hands over his eyes. His _horse._ His horse was dead, wrenched away from him by a fist that could have crushed it, he’d been caught, he’d been, he’d been, he’d been _swallowed--_

“What. Are. You.”

The captain’s chilly voice grounded him, wrenched him back to himself and Ben blinked at his commander. He probably looked like such a fool, wide-eyed and confused, mouth slack with disbelief. Hadn’t he been swallowed?

“What happened?” he tried again. “Sir?” he added for good measure.

Captain Hux was picking his nails with a pocket knife. Without looking up, he pointed the blade at Ben and Ben felt a chill dart down his spine. He swallowed.

“You. Were dead. I watched you die.” He looked up from his fingers, and his green eyes were black in the firelight. “So how is it we’re having this little chat, hmm?”

Ben didn’t understand anything. None of it made sense. But something told him asking another question would get him stuck with that knife. So instead, he said, “I don’t know, sir.”

“Are you a man or a titan?”

Hux spoke the words casually, like he was asking about the weather, and Ben saw red.

“ _What did you say to me?”_

Hux’s eyes floated from his nails to Ben’s face lazily. Ben saw his tongue run over his teeth behind his lips. “I said. Are you a man. Or a titan.”

“What kind of a question is that?” Ben bellowed like an angry wolf and lurched to his feet. He was weak; his arms and legs trembled.

Hux dropped the pocket knife with a little flick of his wrist that left it buried to the hilt in the soil beside him. He stood too, slow and lazy, unaffected. But Ben could see Hux watching him from the corners of his eye, like Ben was a wild animal, a dog that might lunge at any minute.

“Answer it.”

“I’m a man,” Ben drawled, feeling ridiculous fury arching in front of his eyes. He was compelled to think the captain was joking, that this was all a trick, but if Ben knew anything about Captain Hux it was that he wasn’t a man for jest. And Ben could see _danger_ in the way he was holding himself, in the way he watched Ben through his long lashes. The way he hadn’t closed the pocket knife and had left it, inconspicuously, within reach.

Hux dusted his hands off and finally met Ben’s eyes. “Are you sure?”

Ben tried to reply but he was too stunned to answer. Hux was serious. Hux was deadly serious.

Ben swallowed again, swallowed his rage and the first pricklings of fear, and said, “Sir. How did we get here?”

Hux’s voice was light when he spoke. In most men, Ben would have taken his tone for ease. But in the captain, Ben saw the airy twist of a blade in a sure hand, the delicate footfalls of a wiry fighter grinning at the prey that has underestimated him. “You brought us here.”

“Me?” Ben half hissed, frowning. It never occurred to him to doubt the truth of Hux’s words. However unbelievable they sounded, the captain didn’t flinch.

He surveyed Ben for at least a full minute in complete, still silence. Then he stepped around the fire and Ben straightened reflexively, back going stiff, hands to his side. He almost saluted.

The captain came close to him, so close, Ben could feel the heat flaring from his nostrils. Hux narrowed his eyes, hands loose and deceptively casual at his sides. Ben was taller than Hux was by little more than an inch, and nearly twice as wide, but he still felt like he was staring up at Hux, like Hux was towering over him, taller than a titan.

“You don’t remember?”

And Ben was afraid.

The realization made him angry, hit him hard like a punch as he suddenly replayed all the ways he’d given himself away, his sweating palms and too stiff back and racing heart that he was suddenly sure the captain could _feel,_ standing so close. He was afraid and Hux knew it. Not afraid of his words-- though they were terrifying in their own right-- but afraid of _him._ Afraid of the captain. He could murder Ben, out here in the dark. If he wanted to. He could tell everyone Ben had been eaten. Something told Ben it wasn’t even a lie.

Ben said as steadily as he could, “No, sir.”

Hux stared at him for another too-long minute, and then exhaled. Nothing in his posture changed, but Ben almost felt him relax, knew, somehow, that the danger had passed.

The captain sunk back to the log he’d been sitting on by the fire and picked up his knife. “Interesting.”

Ben’s head spun with sudden frustration so strong he could taste it. It was only the lingering remnants of his fear that kept him from shouting, from sticking his fist in the captain’s face and asking him what the fuck was going on and to tell him in plain words, goddamn it. Instead, he ground his teeth together once, and carefully sat back down in the dirt.

“You turned into one of them.”

Ben laughed out loud, a surprised, nervous bark of laughter. Because that _had_ to be a joke. Didn’t it?

Hux didn’t laugh. Instead he looked back down at his nails and started picking them again. When Ben followed his gaze, he realized Hux had pulled one nail ragged; the knife was poking lightly at a hangnail and a thin stream of blood had pooled up, dripped across his fingertip and loosed a single drop to land in the soil below. Hux’s face was impassive. The knife kept digging.

Ben’s jaw fell. “ _What?”_

“I watched you get swallowed,” Hux said again, to his own hands. “And then I watched an aberrant appear out of nowhere and start stomping on necks.”

“No.”

“A titan fighting titans.” Hux’s lip curled once in mock amusement that was really disgust. “Well, it was certainly effective.” The hand holding the knife clenched and Ben watched the tip dip deeper into the space between nail and flesh. Hux’s fingertip went white before turning livid red and dripping more blood into the dirt. Ben tried to wet his dry lips and realized Hux was staring past his own hands into the distance between his fingertips and the dirt in front of the fire.

“Sir?”

Hux’s eyes snapped to his face, focusing on him with a chilling intensity. Ben looked pointedly at his hands, and Hux peered down, seemed to realize what he was doing with a little flash of annoyance. He wiped the blade once on his trousers, closed it, and slid it into his pocket. He flicked his fingers toward the fire and Ben heard the blood sizzle when it landed.

“You were what, sixth in your class?”

“Fourth, sir.”

“You could have joined the Military Police. Why are you here?”

Ben considered lying. Or telling only half the truth. But no one was here but the captain, and somehow, Ben knew Hux would know if he lied. “My mother. Sir. She’s--”

“I know who your mother is,” Hux scoffed.

Ben ignored the itch of annoyance that settled between his teeth. “Everyone always expected me to join the Garrison Corps.” He shrugged as if that would be enough, as if the logical end to this statement was, ‘So of course I couldn’t.’ “And the General always said the MP were a waste of good men and a bunch of cowards besides. So I chose this.”

Hux stretched out, crossed his long legs at the ankle and his arms over his chest and Ben remembered the first time he’d ever seen Hux.

_He was ten. His mother had forced him to cut his hair and put on the most ridiculous ceremonial clothes. Ben, and his foster siblings, Rey and Jacen, all stood behind her in a neat little line with their hands clasped behind their backs. Han stood behind them, trying not to look bored. Ben would have hated it, all this ceremony, if it hadn’t meant he got to stay home from school that week._

_Leia was giving a very rousing speech. Ben could tell by the way everyone was staring at her, by the gleam in their eyes. To her right, standing on the stage like Ben and Han were, was a teenager with a flat stare and long legs. Ben couldn’t help but watch him; all this pomp and ceremony was for him. He was a hero, Leia had said, had rescued his squad from the jaws of the monsters she was always talking about, and no one had died-- although one of the cadets had lost a leg._

_The titans. Ben had never seen a titan. He liked to think if he did, he wouldn’t be scared._

_Leia paused in her speech and a cheer went up. She motioned to the boy and he stepped forward, looking almost bored. He still gave an immaculate salute; there wasn’t a hint of impertinence in his face or in his body, but Ben still thought he would rather not be here._

_The soldier looked around before he turned to face the crowd and show off the medal Leia had pinned to his chest. His eyes scrapped over Ben just once, and Ben wondered if he’d been scared. Decided he hadn’t been. Decided nothing could scare this dead eyed boy with the long legs and gleaming red hair. He was a hero. And heros didn’t get scared._

“So you want glory then?” Hux demanded, cutting through Ben’s thoughts, tongue suddenly sharper than his blade.

“I want to be useful,” Ben said with a forced shrug. What Hux had said hadn’t been wrong. Hux narrowed his eyes and Ben actually squirmed under his gaze. “I. I want to prove it’s not. I want to prove I’m more than just her son,” he said quietly.

Hux scoffed derisively. “I don’t think anyone will have any trouble believing that,” he said coldly. “Last I checked, the General didn’t turn into one of them the second things got a little dicey.”

Ben gaped at him. “You said I got _swallowed.”_

Hux shrugged.

“That’s-- more than a little dicey!” Ben stammered. “And I.” He swallowed past the words. “I turned into one of them?”

Hux’s right eyebrow twitched. “That’s what I said,” he drawled. “You seem to have a problem _listening,_ Ben Solo.” He tapped the space in front of his own left ear. “You’d think that wouldn’t be such an issue for you.”

Ben felt a furious twitch dart over his skin. The _captain_ was making fun of his _ears?_ He glowered at Hux over the little fire and had to bite his tongue. The last time someone had poked fun at his ears, Ben had rubbed their face in the dirt. But trying to do that to the captain was a surefire way to get himself skewered and then discharged. In that order.

“You turned into one. You--carried--” Hux spat the word like it offended him. “Me here, and then I pulled you from its neck.”

“Its neck?” Ben interrupted, curiosity peaking in spite of the impossibility of what Hux had just told him.

Hux nodded slowly. “The nape.”

The nape. The titans’ only weak point. Ben swallowed. “What. What are you going to do, sir?” he whispered, voice quiet though he’d tried to sound strong.

Hux tilted his head thoughtfully, and his hair fell into his eyes. “I haven’t decided yet.” Ben just stared, waited for him to go on. In time, he did. “My first instinct was to kill you,” Hux admitted nonchalantly. “But you seemed mostly in control of yourself in that state-- you. _Protected_ me.” Hux scowled and licked the word off his lips. “And brought us directly here. The other titans attacked you, seemed to consider you prey, which I find. Very interesting.” He shoved his hair out of his eyes and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You killed at least half a dozen in one go like it was nothing.”

Ben felt his lips part in surprise. Six at once? _Him?_ And he couldn’t even remember.

“And more besides, but that was the most in one go.”

Ben felt something nervous and sick turn over in his stomach. “You think you can. Use me.”

Hux lifted one elegant brow. “You wanted to be useful, didn’t you?”

Ben’s mouth moved without producing any sound before he ground out, “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

Hux crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back again. “Is it going to be a problem? I can always just turn you over to our scientists and let them decide what to do with you.”

Ben felt sick. It hit him in the gut, made bile rise in the back of his throat, made his pulse pound behind his eyes. “No,” he hissed through too-dry lips. “I won’t be an _experiment.”_ It was the worst thing he could think of. He’d always hated doctors and scientists, always hated the needles and the lights and the cold beds and restraints. That would be his life.

He couldn’t handle that.

“Then your choice seems clear,” Hux drawled. “We’ll do our own tests, of course. Unless you know why you’re like this?” Ben shook his head. “Pity.”

Yes, Ben thought. It was.

 

*******

 

Hux watched the boy over the fire and tried to make the images in his head match what his eyes were seeing. He knew he’d pulled Ben out of that titan’s neck-- knew the titan even looked like Ben, if he was being honest. The titan had Ben’s hair and nose and ridiculous ears.

The eyes were the dead giveaway though. Even if the titan had looked nothing like Ben otherwise, it had had his eyes.

But Hux still couldn’t make the knowledge fit in his head. This overzealous brat was capable of _that?_ Hux had seen boys like Ben before. They always wanted to prove themselves. They thought since they ranked top in their cadet class that they were real soldiers, that they were invincible. Hux had seen them die, seen them desert, seen them discharged, reassigned, resign in shame.

At least he wasn’t a coward. Hux tugged his knife from his pocket and started cleaning his nails again. Hux thought of the way Ben had met his eyes, the expression in them when Ben had dropped his gas canister and then stared the titan in the mouth. He hadn’t even closed his eyes. Ben wasn’t a coward.

In the moments after, when Hux had been starting the fire, he’d thought, _but of course he wasn’t afraid._ But then Ben had woken up, had been just as confused, just as unnerved as Hux had been. A man couldn’t fake that kind of disbelief.

“The caravan.” Ben broke into his thoughts and Hux stood instantly, pocketing his knife. There were torch flames flickering in the darkness. It was the appropriate number, Hux noted in relief he wouldn’t admit to. If they’d gotten attacked, the whole caravan hadn’t been wiped out at least.

Ben and Hux met them at the base of the little hill where they’d camped. Phasma’s face got stiff the moment she saw them. The rest of the soldiers were grinding to a stop, dismounting. Poe said breathlessly and thoughtlessly, “Where’re the others? On the hill?”

Ben’s head dipped lower on his shoulders. Hux lifted his chin. Poe’s face fell.

Phasma shouted a few orders that Hux didn’t really hear; she would handle getting the camp set up, getting food distributed. Instead, he watched his soldiers.

Rey dismounted and embraced Ben the moment she thought it was safe to do so, her twin hot on her heels. Jacen patted Ben on the back twice before grasping his shoulder in a familiar, comforting motion. Hux was standing close enough to hear her whisper, “Unamo and--”

Ben nodded wordlessly.

“But what happened?”

“There were more,” Ben said haltingly. “The um. The captain and I almost didn’t make it out.” His eyes jumped to Hux then, just once before he looked away. Hux turned away then. He didn’t need to listen to them; nothing any of them said really mattered.

“Phasma.” He only had to say her name once and she was trotting after him. They separated themselves from the rest of the group.  

“What happened?” she asked. She sounded tired and Hux wondered if he sounded like that now too. Once her voice would have been tight and strained, tinged with grief and failure and shame. Once.

“We took out the group we went after, but there were more in the trees. An aberrant.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know,” he lied. It wasn’t important. “Phasma. The brat and I should be dead.”

“Odd time to be modest, Hux,” she muttered wryly.

“I’m not. He. The kid.” Hux lowered his voice even further. “He turned into one of them.”

Phasma laughed once, a short, unsure chuckle, her face frozen somewhere between confusion and disbelief. Then she remembered that Hux didn’t joke because she said, “ _What?”_

“I’ve never seen anything like it. He got eaten. And then this titan appeared and started. It killed all of them. And then it _carried_ me back here. It was him. I pulled him out of it’s neck.”

Phasma’s mouth hung open, stiff with incredulous terror.

“He doesn’t remember any of it,” Hux went on. “I don’t think he has any idea what happened. He’s not exactly adept at hiding his emotions.”

“What.” Phasma swallowed hard. “What are you going to do?”

Hux shrugged one thin shoulder. “Turn him over to Sloane. And his mother.”

“You think General Organa knows about this?”

Hux lifted his brows and rolled his eyes under closed lids. “I’ve no idea. I don’t see her intentionally putting any soldiers in danger but.”

“But?”

“Everyone thought the brat would join the Garrison Corps. Follow in mommy’s footsteps.”

“She could have kept an eye on him, control his assignments.”

Hux nodded. “But he wound up with us instead.”

“Why is that?”

Hux shrugged derisively. “Same old crap. Wants to prove himself. Tired of living in the General’s shadow.”

Phasma breathed out slowly and shoved a shock of white hair out of her eyes. “Never a dull moment.” She was peering past Hux at Ben, who was huddled close with Rey, Jacen, and Finn, whispering into the darkness.

“No,” he agreed. “Never a dull moment.”

 

He awoke too early. Hux opened his eyes without having to be roused, even though he was so exhausted by the previous day’s exertions that the thought of climbing on a horse made staying until daybreak when the titans could move again seem attractive.

He still pushed himself to his feet, nodded once to the cadet who’d been placed on watch, and tiptoed over to the space where he had last seen Ben, sleeping soundly with Rey on his left, Finn on his right, and Jacen sprawled out at their feet.

He wasn’t there; Rey and Finn had a gap between them where a full bed roll had been. Sometime in the night, they’d rolled toward one another and their hands brushed in the empty space.

Hux peered quietly around. Ben wasn’t here.

A jolt of unease shot through Hux’s chest, the closest he ever came to panic. Had the brat really taken off in the middle of the night? If they’d lost him…

Hux tiptoed around the sleeping soldiers and headed for the peak of the hill, where he’d have the best view. They were surrounded by thick, tall trees, and the crumbling remains of what had once been a stronghold-- it was why they had chosen this spot to camp. They were well guarded on three sides, and the fourth was easily defensible. He could see the whole camp if he chose the right spot, even in the darkness.

He hadn’t reached the top before he saw it; a thick shouldered shadow clinging to the stone of the tallest wall still standing, pressed into the darkness of what had once been a window ledge. Hux would have missed it if he hadn’t looked up at the exact moment that it shifted, ever so slightly, into more shadow.

He trotted back down the hill toward the wall, leaving sleeping soldiers and an ever watchful Phasma in his wake; she nodded once when he passed, either smart enough or disinterested enough not to ask him where he was going.

He scaled the wall rather than grapple up; it was an easy climb, quiet, and it got his blood pumping, pushed the sleep from his veins.

Ben didn’t hear him coming, so he got to watch the brat jump when he hauled himself over the ledge and sat down beside him. It was a tight squeeze, in the crumbling stone window frame. Hux couldn’t find the space he usually preferred and his thigh was pressed against Ben’s. Ben’s skin was hotter than it should be.

Ben stared at him in questioning silence; he’d been looking across the field, away from the city and the Walls. There were two titans within sight, both utterly still and useless in the darkness.

Ben said, “You should just kill me.” His voice was darker than the shadows he was hiding in. Hux sucked his teeth and shifted so he could lean against the window frame. He didn’t say anything. “People who can turn into titans, that’s-- what if it happens when I’m inside the Wall? What if I--”

“Hurt someone?” Ben went silent and glowered at the still monsters in the distance. Hux stretched absently; he’d bruised his shoulder somehow yesterday and it was tight. “Like your friends?” Ben’s head sunk even lower on his shoulders in obvious misery and Hux smirked to himself. The boy was even easier to read than most. “They joined the Survey Corps, kid. They knew what they were signing up for.”

“Yeah, but--”

“Shut up. I’m talking.” Hux cracked his neck almost reflexively, an intimidating little trick he’d learned as a kid that had turned into a habit he couldn’t quite break. “You know what that sigil means?” he asked, thudding Ben heavily on the back, fingers digging into the center of his Survey Corps cloak. “We wear the Wings of Freedom. We’re Humanity’s greatest defense against the titans and we’re the only ones who have any hope of stopping them-- not just defending against them, Solo. But _stopping_ them. Getting back our freedom. Your friends knew the risks and they knew the statistics. They know there’s a thirty percent chance they end up dead even without you to worry about.” Across the field, one of the titans was trying to lift its arm. After a few useless twitches, it gave up.

“Maybe you didn’t though,” he continued softly. “Wouldn’t be the first time some rich brat from the inner cities thought he had what it takes to make it out here.” He felt Ben bristle beside him, but the kid was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. “You handled yourself well enough,” Hux admitted. “You’ve got promise.” He trailed off into silence, letting Ben savor the little bit of praise Hux had given him. A few fat storm clouds scudded across the sky; Hux hoped they’d beat the rain back to the Wall. “You’re a weapon, kid. And we need every weapon we can get our hands on.”

Hux finally turned to look at him. Ben was staring at him in the moonlight, brown eyes wide and black, mouth twisted in determination. “A weapon’s only as good as the man pointing it. You come for one of us, I’ll take you out.”

Ben’s head thumped back against the window frame and Hux looked away, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. Hux could read him, could see all the ways that declaration satisfied and terrified him. Wordlessly, Hux offered him a cigarette. He took one.

A cloud tripped in front of the moon, so in the moment when Hux held up his lighter and Ben leaned forward, the world went dark. The only light was the orange flame, illuminating Ben’s face. Hux closed the lighter; the wind blew the cloud away. But Hux could still see the fire flickering, burning, in Ben’s eyes.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Come visit us both on tumblr! El is[ here,](https://ellabesmirched.tumblr.com/) and Sheepandpencils is [here!](http://sheepandpencils.tumblr.com/)


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